Back in the summer, Nathan Lively interviewed me for his excellent Sound Design Live Podcast.
It was a really fun and wide-ranging discussion, covering show control,
the role of networks on modern shows, my book (the official point of
the discussion), challenges to getting good live sound, modern
entertainment technology education, what I think about most theatre, and
even severe weather and its role in recent stage collapses.

Nathan has now got the whole thing edited up and online, you should be able to listen to it below, or--better yet--subscribe to Nathan's podcast using your favorite podcast program.

I've been a subscriber to 2600 magazine,
"The Hacker Quarterly" since the mid-1980's, and I've spoken at the
last two of 2600's HOPE conferences (you can hear my talks and see the
slides here and here). Since the 1990's the 2600 team has put on a live show on WBAI radio here in NYC called Off the Hook. It was an honor last night to be a guest on their show, where I talked about my book, City Tech, and the Gravesend Inn. You can download an MP3 of the show here.

If you work with control systems and networks in any kind of
entertainment technology application, I highly recommend this book. Even
if you have one of the older editions, this is a significant update,
well worth putting on your shelf as the go-to reference for networking
and control.

My old friend Greg Poulos interviewed me on the occasion of my book release; you can read it here, or download a PDF here.

HOPE Number Nine, the biennial hacker conference here in NYC took place two weeks ago. This was my fifth HOPE, and my second talk,
titled "The Weather is Not Boring, Forecasting, Following, and
Photographing Storms." I took the audio provided by the conference and
synced it up with the slides (along with some bonus video!) and made
this hour-long video. Watch full-screen HD for best resolution.

I had fun as a panelist on Episode 26 of the AV Nation Podcast
yesterday, talking about random AV topics and also why 3D video doesn't
work, crystal meth, and Donald Trump. You can listen to it here or on on Itunes.

Back in April, I was interviewed about infrasound for season two of a show called either "Weird or What? with William Shatner" or "William Shatner's Weird or What?", depending on where you look. The show is produced out of Toronto by Cineflix, and they recently sent me a DVD copy of "Episode 17 - Paranormal Mysteries", in which I appeared; it looks like this episode started airing on History Television in Canada on Halloween. History Television is apparently not related to the US History Channel, but it does run some of the same shows, and claims to be, "the
number one source for entertaining and engaging historical
programming", which, "captivates Canadian audiences with gripping
stories about the people and events that have shaped our world."

The producers contacted me on a referral by my friend Sarah Angliss, who, with another friend, the great psychologist Richard Wiseman, had done some fascinating infrasound research, which inspired me to do my own research on infrasound last year.
As is apparently often the case with these shows, the producers already
had an overall narrative in place, and were looking to me to tell a
piece of that story for them. I had never been on one of these kinds of
shows before, and I figured that--as long as I refused to say anything I
didn't believe to be true--it would be an interesting experience (even,
sadly, though Shatner doesn't go out to do the interviews). So, I said
yes.

A Cineflix researcher asked if I thought that infrasound could have
caused some of the phenomena a woman named Jackie Hernandez reported
back 1989 in San Pedro, California. I had never heard of Hernandez, but
googling around, I found a lot of paranormal sites with breathless
recountings of the events, and also several versions of this video, from a show called "Phenomenon: The Lost Archives"
which aired sometime in the 1990's. On that video, you can see actual
footage shot in the Hernandez home, and an interview with Hernandez
herself. It's too bad that Cineflix didn't (or couldn't?) use this
original footage, because I think it helps explain the realities of the
situation better than Weird or What's re-enactments, with telegenic
actors shot in some sort of rustic cabin in Canada standing in for San
Pedro.

The researcher called before the taping, and we went over a list of
detailed questions about the Hernandez case. I was a bit nervous on the
day of the interview, because--especially for someone who has spent his
entire life backstage--it's always weird sitting in front of a camera.
But the crew was very professional and focused, guiding me through
multiple repetitions of my answers until I addressed all of the points
the producers wanted to cover. Ironically for a show about infrasound,
we also had to stop and restart many times because of the intense low
frequencies caused by passing subway trains underneath the basement of
my school building, where we recorded the interview.

Watching the finished episode, I feel like the producers treated me
fairly, and I was surprised how little they actually edited me, leaving
in tact some pretty long (and somewhat stumbling) statements. A few
specific points about the program for those of you who can see it:

They say that I believe, "... the Jackie Hernandez case can be
explained by [infrasound]". Actually, I never said that. I do think
that some of the reported phenomena, like seeing apparitions, could
possibly be caused by exposure to Infrasound. Obviously, some of the
other things reported (the "hanging") would need other explanations.

Here's
the "Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory" report titled, "Mechanical
Resonant Frequency of the Human Eye In Vivo" from August 1976.

At the end of my segment, they imply that I think "my" theory about
infrasound could explain "human plasma" coming from the walls, but I
never addressed that issue at all.

Since I was only on the program to talk, narrowly, about infrasound,
that's the area that I'll limit my comments to here, and if anyone wants
to comment on what I actually said in the program, feel free. I didn't
investigate or research the other reported events, so I can't really
comment on them, although in general, I'm definitely with the great Carl Sagan
in believing that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence." And that's especially true for a "haunting", since if the
Hernandez events could be proven to be true, they would entirely
change our understanding of the physical world. That would be pretty
cool, but for me, I don't feel like any of the paranormal investigators
in the program provided evidence that would meet that "extraordinary"
criteria. If better evidence existed, I would imagine "world-renowned
parapsychologist" Barry Taff, who spearheaded this investigation, would
by now certainly have claimed the million dollars
offered by James Randi to anyone "who can show, under proper observing
conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or
event."

Future airings in Canada are listed here,
and it's possible this might end up being aired in the US, since season
one of the show apparently aired on the Discovery Channel, with
Shatner's lead ins replaced, for some political reason, by Peter MacNeill.

My old friend George Tucker is now part of the excellent AVWeek podcast, which this week invited me to do a special "AV Nation" show to talk about the technology behind the Gravesend Inn, and my thoughts on the importance of networks.

In
honor of my 30th high school reunion (holy crap, saying that makes me
feel old!), I present to you, for the first time on the internet, The Bomb:

Bob Strickland and I shot this at Westtown School on Super 8 film,
with post production cassette audio--the voice over and entire
soundtrack were done in one take!All the film, obviously,
was cut by hand, and then a few years ago I had the whole thing
transferred to DVD and I resynch'ed the sound track. We won an
"honorable mention" for the film at the National Student Media Festival of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology in April, 1981.